WASHINGTON – I almost skipped my spin class this morning. I would have missed the first lady of the United States.
Jill Biden has made her love for SoulCycle evident – she even attended a class in London the day after King Charles III's coronation with Akshata Murthy, the wife of the U.K. prime minister. But I definitely wasn't prepared Wednesday morning to see her, second gentlemen Doug Emhoff or the Secret Service when I showed up, still half-asleep, to my 7 a.m. "Pop Star Battles: Lizzo vs. Harry Styles"-themed SoulCycle class in Georgetown, about a 10-minute drive from the White House.
After I absentmin
dedly went through a metal detector and bag check at the door (I sleepily did a double take as that's not part of my usual SoulCycle routine), I made my way to my bike. A few minutes later, Biden, dressed casually in workout clothes, joined me in the back row, two seats away. The first song of our class was "Like a Girl" by Lizzo, which starts off with her singing: "Woke up feeling like I just might run for president." I'm choosing to believe this was a purposeful decision on our instructor's part.
Some call it a cult, but I love the camaraderie of a spin class. Between the instructor cheering you on, classmates around you working hard and, in today's case, Harry Styles' and Lizzo's feel-good music, I'm so much more motivated to push myself than I would be at home or at the gym by myself.